The History of Reynard the Foxe, William Caxton, H. Halliday Sparling, William Morris, London, 1892. * PT5584.E5 C3 1892. The title page and opening page of the Kelmscott edition of Caxton's famous work features an ornamental design produced from a woodblock print.
The History of Reynard the Foxe, William Caxton, H. Halliday Sparling, William Morris, London, 1892. * PT5584.E5 C3 1892. Morris developed his own fonts for his Kelmscott Press. His Troy font (shown here) and its smaller version, the Chaucer font, both are based on William Caxton's fifteenth-century typographical designs for his press, which famously inagurated moveable type printing in England.
The History of Reynard the Foxe, William Caxton, H. Halliday Sparling, William Morris, London, 1892. * PT5584.E5 C3 1892. Every aspect of a Kelmscott book was handmade based on studies in the history of book design. This limp vellum binding features a gold stamp title and olive green cotton ribbons.
The History of Reynard the Foxe by William Caxton, Kelmscott Press, 1892.
This beautiful handmade letterpress volume was produced in London in 1892 by the Kelmscott Press, which was founded by the British artist and socialist William Morris. Morris was interested in a pre-industrial model of craftsmanship based on the artisan guilds of earlier eras, and The History of Reynard the Foxe shows just how much care and detail went into every part of the bookmaking process.1
It is a large quarto (11.5” x 8.25”), printed on linen paper that Morris had made by hand specifically for the Kelmscott.2 It is bound in a limp vellum cover with the title printed with gold-stamp on the binding that includes three pair of olive green flat cotton ties. The title page is made from a woodcut print, and the rich black and red inks were formulated according to the Morris’s requirements.3 The book was printed in type that was designed and handmade by Morris for the Kelmscott Press. This book mostly uses Kelmscott’s Troy type, with the final glossary in Chaucer type. Other initial letters, borders, and other ornaments appear throughout, all of which were designed and made by Morris. The edges of the pages are trimmed, “in accordance with the invariable practice of the early printers.”4
The History of Reynard the Foxe was the tenth book produced by Kelmscott shortly after it was founded in 1891. Morris explored all types of handicrafts and decorative arts based on the influence of Socialist philosophers who were concerned about the dehumanizing effect of Capitalism and industrialization.5 Morris felt that beautiful handmade objects represented the soul and the spirit of the worker, and he sought to rescue older forms of hand-made artistry in order to resist the soulless mechanization of industrial production. He opened the Kelmscott Press late in his life, as a way to apply his Socialist politics of Arts and Crafts specifically to the field of book arts.6 The press was also represented a lifetime of academic study into not only the literature of medical and renaissance Europe, but also of European book arts. Although Morris studied and produced fabrics, wallpaper, furniture, stained glass, and painting, books were long a favorite of his, and he amassed his own library of medieval manuscripts and printed book specimens spanning the history of European book printing.7 He studied this to design his typography, decorations, page design, and binding, and those historical references are very clear in the Kelmscott edition of The History of Reynard the Foxe by William Caxton.
The History of Reynard the Foxe is a reprint of a text from over 400 years earlier by William Caxton, which itself represents an important moment in the history of the book. Caxton is known to be the first English printer, and his innovations in book design and typography were very influential.8 Caxton’s is a translation of a Flemish work called Hystorie van Reynaert die vos, although there are numerous folk tales that feature some version of tales of Reynard.9 The tale is a Bestiary, or a mythic beast folk tale, and its central character, an anthropomorphic red fox, is a trickster figure who shows up frequently in Northern European folklore.10 By choosing to reprint Caxton’s translation, Morris creates a work that represents the politics of his own time period, but also the history of printing in England and the history of folkloric traditions in Europe.
William Caxton is known as the first English printer, having brought the technology of moveable type from Germany to set up his own shop in Westminster in about 1475.11 He was also a scholar and translator, and is credited with helping to stabilize the English language and in making English literature more widespread through his editions of Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye and The Canterbury Tales.12 In fact, Morris carefully studied those two of Caxton’s most famous works in order to develop the Kelmscott’s own Troy and Chaucer fonts.13 Morris also felt that Caxton’s contribution to English literature was worth preserving and promoting through the aesthetic letterpress reproduction of this beautiful book. Of the text, Morris wrote to his publisher Bernard Quartich:
This translation of Caxton’s is one of the very best of his works as to style; and being translated from a kindred tongue is delightful as mere language. In its rude joviality, and simple and direct delineation of character, it is a thoroughly good representative of the famous ancient Beast Epic.14
This precious volume is one of only 310 copies produced by the Kelmscott Press. This copy at the Special Collections library at UCLA includes a receipt indicated that it was purchased by Bruce G. Belt, M.D. in 1956 from the famed London bookseller Martin Breslauer, and from there it entered the library of his father Dr. Elmer Belt, from whom it was acquired by UCLA in 2014.15 UCLA libraries have a special relationship with the Belts, housing as it does both The UCLA Elmer Belt Florence Nightingale Collection in the UCLA Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library and The Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana (in the UCLA Arts Library), both of which were donations from Dr. and Mrs. Belt.16 This artistic book object materializes many histories indeed.
Notes
1 Peterson, William S. A Bibliography of the Kelmscott Press. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).↩
2 According to the Arts and Crafts Museum at Cheltenham, “Handmade paper was sourced from Joseph Batchelor in Kent, and after an intensive search, truly black additive-free black ink was found in Hanover, made by the Gebrüder Jänecke.” See “Arts and Crafts Movement: Kelmscott Press,” Arts and Crafts Museum at Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum. [http://www.artsandcraftsmuseum.org.uk/Arts_and_Crafts_Movement/Emery_Walker_Library/The_Private_Press_Movement/Kelmscott_Press.aspx].↩
3 "William Morris and the Kelmscott Press," The Cleveland Museum of Art. [https://www.clevelandart.org/research/in-the-library/collection-in-focus/william-morris-and-kelmscott-press], accessed Februrary 15, 2018.↩
4 This according to the entry in Kelmscott’s official bibliography, See Morris, William and Cockerell, S.C., A Note by William Morris on his Aim in Founding the Kelmscott Press: Together with a Short Description of the Press by S.C. Cockerell and an Annotated List of the Books Thereat. (Hammersmith: Kelmscott, 1895), 28.↩
5 Vallance, Aymer. “Socialism.” William Morris: His Art, His Writings, and His Public Life. (London: George Bell and Sons, 1897). 305-365.↩
6 Morris, William and Cockerell, S.C., A Note by William Morris on his Aim in Founding the Kelmscott Press: Together with a Short Description of the Press by S.C. Cockerell and an Annotated List of the Books Thereat. (Hammersmith: Kelmscott, 1895), 8-15.↩
7 Vallance, Aymer. “Book Decoration and the Kelmscott Press.” William Morris: His Art, His Writings, and His Public Life. (London: George Bell and Sons, 1897). 376-416.↩
8 Special Collections Department. “Printing in England from William Caxton to Christopher Barker, An Exhibition: November 1976 - April 1977.” University of Glasgow Special Collections: Exhibitions. [http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/printing/index.html], accessed February 15, 2018.↩
9 Morley, Henry. “Introduction.” The History of Reynard the Fox: William Caxton’s English Translation of 1481. (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1889). Digital Edition by David Badke, October, 2003. [http://bestiary.ca/etexts/morley1889/morley%20-%20history%20of%20reynard%20the%20fox.pdf].↩
10 Ibid.↩
11 Special Collections Department. “Printing in England from William Caxton to Christopher Barker, An Exhibition: November 1976 - April 1977.” University of Glasgow Special Collections: Exhibitions. [http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/printing/index.html], accessed February 15, 2018.↩
12 Morley, Henry. “Introduction.” The History of Reynard the Fox: William Caxton’s English Translation of 1481. (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1889). Digital Edition by David Badke, October, 2003. [http://bestiary.ca/etexts/morley1889/morley%20-%20history%20of%20reynard%20the%20fox.pdf].↩
13 See “Collection Items: William Caxton's illustrated second edition of The Canterbury Tales.” The British Library. [https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/william-caxton-and-canterbury-tales.↩
14 Morris, William and Cockerell, S.C., A Note by William Morris on his Aim in Founding the Kelmscott Press: Together with a Short Description of the Press by S.C. Cockerell and an Annotated List of the Books Thereat. (Hammersmith: Kelmscott, 1895), 28.↩
15 Information about its accession is in this item’s catalog record of UCLA Library: [https://catalog.library.ucla.edu/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=2817938].↩
16 Briston, Heather. “Elmer Belt, Collector of Ideas Exhibit.” Library Special Collections Blog. November 18, 2011. [http://www.library.ucla.edu/blog/special/2011/11/18/elmer-belt-collector-of-ideas-exhibit].↩
This spotlight exhibit by Daniel Williford as part of Dr. Johanna Drucker's "History of the Book and Literacy Technologies" seminar in Winter 2018 in the Information Studies Department at UCLA.
For documentation on this project, personnel, technical information, see Documentation. For contact email: drucker AT gseis.ucla.edu.